Monday, August 28, 2017

Was (What in German)

Merhaba ladies and gentlemen, welcome.

I hope you’re all just doing quite well and dandy. This week was nothing but spectacular. We got to experience some cool stuff. We ate with a member on Thursday, and had some awesome German food ft. Rotkohl. For those of you who know me, my taste in good food varies from about McDonald's Hot n Spicy to Pizza with maybe hot Cheetos in between somewhere. Never would I imagine that in my right mind I would eat Rotkohl and enjoy it, but here we are folks. She also left us with some potato salad to take home (Elder Oliver’s favorite), which was quite nice.


Lamborghini mercy


elder Oliver buying some more minecraft Legos #cantstopwontstop​


We had quite the experience at the Tafel this week. We were there doing our job as usual and this Russian lady came in, paid her 3€ and got her food but started just like giving it back because it wasn't good enough for her. BUT we can't take back the food once it's given out so we weren't taking it back. We were trying to explain that to her, she decided she wanted her money back, and the boss was like nah fool you got your food, no money back. And then she started like screaming in Russian and he was screaming in German at her and she like storms around to the other side of the counter where the money is and attempts to get to it herself, but the boss got in front of her and was yelling in German that he'll call the police and stuff and she was just freaking out. Her friends came in and eventually ripped her out of there, what a great day at the Tafel.

Yeah, those were kinda the big parts of our week. We did some service for a member’s husband and that was quite enjoyable. I've had a ton of people say Servus to me since I started and it's wonderful. Oh, and we found a mini monopoly set for 7€ so we snagged that up real quick and have had some fun in our free time.


our mini monopoly set (use phone in top left for scale)


Lastly, I was kind of thinking this week about how it's pretty lame I didn't get to lifeguard this summer, instead I am on a mission. But if you think about it, I'm not lifeguarding, sondern lifeSAVING. Anyways, thought that was neat and I'd share it with ya.


 #ifytitl​




Enjoy your weeks ahead of you.



Elder Glenn Johnson
Kirche Jesu Christi
Plauer Straße 11d
Brandenburg an der Havel 14770
Deutschland

Tuesday, August 22, 2017

No petting pugs here

Well hello there.

I don't got much time so let's just jump right into it.

To start off, we got our transfer calls this week, and both me and Elder Oliver are staying here in Brandenburg for another. That'll be 4 transfers here, or almost 6 months. I'm excited though I love this area and ward and we're going to destroy it this next transfer.

Last Monday after Pday we met ourselves with our new Arabic investigator. We brought the branch president along which was a great idea. She had a lot of worries and questions about how she could help her son find a place to live in Berlin, and luckily the branch president could help explain why we can't really do much here in Brandenburg. We were able to teach what we wanted to teach, but we at least got her a Book of Mormon and invited her to read and come to church. She ended up coming to church and is reading in the Book of Mormon, so that's pretty sick.

The Potsdam elders had a baptism this week for a legend from Cameroon. I swear those guys are always super ready. We have an investigator from there and maybe we can use their new convert to help us teach him—that would be sick. Also like nobody from our branch came to church this week, there were like 8 of us, so that was lit.

Sorry this email was quite uninteresting. Let me leave something of the spiritual nature for your forgiveness. Let's talk about the big eclipse that just happened for you all in America. We overheard a lot about the eclipse, from Facebook, family, and other Germans from the news. Apparently it is dangerous and bad for your eyes to look directly at the sun during the eclipse, correct? Well, how do we know that, just because the news says it or someone posts about it having affected them earlier? I'm sure there will still be people who don't believe the words of others and will do it nevertheless, and could damage their sight.

How many of us are guilty of the same with regards to God's commandments? There are many things Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, and the prophets have warned us of; with also the testimony of countless other members and believers, but sometimes that's still not enough. We think we need this personal experience in order to actually get a true belief—which can end very poorly. That is a thinking I feel we need to stray away from, as the Book of Mormon, the Bible, and the words of the prophets are testimony enough in how we should live our life to always stay safe.

Anyways I hope none of you went blind from the eclipse; we'll see us next week.

Stay sweet

with my legend Charlotte

we found some watch tower in the middle of the forest, lit
in the tower
feeding some fish in this great body of water




Elder Glenn Johnson
Kirche Jesu Christi
Plauer Straße 11d
Brandenburg an der Havel 14770
Deutschland

Monday, August 14, 2017

Hallo?

As many of you may know, "Servus" is a greeting in parts of Germany such as Sachsen, Bayern, and other southern parts. According to popular belief, you can't say "Moin" anywhere south of Hamburg because nobody will know it, but I conquered that myth many times here in Brandenburg. The real goal, was to get someone to say Servus back to me, and this week it was accomplished. The borders of where you can say what fell harder than the Berlin Wall. Nonetheless, it did take many tries, everywhere from people saying "hallo?" quite confused back, to them just making sounds that are similar to a villager in minecraft. It makes it fun saying hi to people.

Man, this week flew by. Elder Pen Rah See (Elder Penrose) and I had a wonderful Tausch, where I continued my streak of beating him in chess every time he tries. We also had ZoKo, (zone conference) which was pretty alright. The best part about it was having it in Freiberg.

Since we left so early, we made it to the temple earlier and got to do more work than some of the other missionaries, which was pretty sweet. The temple is a sick place, and nice that me and Elder Oliver are now famous among the workers there. (after going 3 weeks straight.) Now we just need to find a way to get there this coming week so we can keep our streak going on that one.


​our cute district at the temple (elder pen rah see lookin' the best)​

We had an investigator come to church which was quite fantastic. We met this wonderful Arabic lady at the Tafel, and she ended up asking us for the address of our church this week, and actually came! She had a great time, and said she wants to come every week now.

What's interesting about her that I had never heard, she is from Syria, but was raised Christian. Like what? Syria, Christians, didn’t think those mixed, BUT her city had mostly Christian churches and only a small amount of Muslim ones, how sick is that? Hopefully we see good things come from her.

Anyways, that was just about a recap of my week. This week come the transfer calls and I’m really hoping I stay here, because of how great this branch and area is, but we will see!


Have an above average week,



us doin' good ole dishes at the Persian trip


generations pic- my trainer (ex father, Elder Mehr), and my trainer's trainer (ex grandfather, Elder Powell)


​the calm before the storm





Elder Glenn Johnson
Kirche Jesu Christi
Plauer Straße 11d
Brandenburg an der Havel 14770
Deutschland

Tuesday, August 8, 2017

Zoko August 2017

Elder Johnson always having fun! Left side laughing with bestie Elder Mehr, and not wearing a jacket...hmmm. 
For Zone Conference, they got to go to the temple again!

Monday, August 7, 2017

Email till Death

Hey my dudes,

This week was one for the books, it was quite great. There's not too much other than the Persian temple trip to report. We let ourselves the hair be cut (insert Allen quote), had a few lessons, and got ourselves ready for his legendary weekend. We had a great eating appointment with a member in our branch on Thursday right before interviews, which was quite amazing. The food there is about as German as it can get and that is dope. Then we went straight to interviews and had a wonderful time there. Had to miss out on the pizza because our wonderful zone leaders have no clue what they're doing waiting until right before we have to leave to order the Pizza.

After a meeting and getting ourselves prepared on Friday morning, we headed on over to Berlin to pick up Elder Morrell. He is a Turkish missionary whose visa was rejected by the government so he gets to be in Germany for about 5 or so more months. But he is learning Persian as well, so we picked him up and brought him to Freiberg with us. Very interesting guy to say the least. We got to good ole Sachsen, without even losing the phone. Legendary already. We then had the rest of the night to help everyone get settled in and have some good food. Elder Hickenlooper who came from the border of Poland basically, didn't have a phone and his ride fell out at the train station in Freiberg, so he had to walk 30 minutes to the temple by himself to us, pretty funny.

Saturday was a big day. Lots to do. But I'll condense it for your sake. We started out with 2 baptismal sessions split between half of us and we stayed behind so we could wait for our best friend who was still coming from Frankfurt. Ah man that was a great reunion with him. He left Frankfurt at 11pm Friday and got there on Saturday at 9:45am, that's a true disciple of Christ right there. Well, we had baptisms which were super awesome, me and Elder Oliver went and did some more temple work, and then we went to go eat some food. Luckily there was a little left for us, so we didn't have to starve haha. 


our boy

Persian mission squad


my bestest friend ever

schön ain't it


another view of me (and the temple)


cute chocolate thing in Dresden

We got the chance to watch 17 miracles together, while a courageous member translated the whole movie into Persian. The Persian members are literally pioneers. They have been through hardships and trials getting here to Germany, so that they can receive the Gospel here. The stories these humble members tell just hit you right in the heart. How easy we have it sometimes. I have never met a more humble people in my life. To end the night we had a awesome fireside in German and Persian. It was great to hear from President Fingerle, the Temple President, and from Elder Leima of the 70 who hung out with us the whole weekend. What an awesome experience.

I could just go on forever talking about different experiences and awesome things we saw there, but nobody got time for that. On Sunday we got to have a Persian Sacrament meeting, with everything in Farsi, Sacrament prayers, hymns, testimonies, everything. How wonderful. Luckily it was also translated into German so that helped as well haha. The testimonies of these members were just so strong and incredible. One of the women said, tearing up, "I am so excited that I can be here, because I finally get to share my testimony in my language." These people are just outstanding. I wish you could all get the chance to you know how great they are.

We experienced one last miracle on the way home. We were bought different tickets than we thought we were getting, and it turned out to be a blessing. We took a bus from Freiberg to Dresden, and as we got our seats, we realized the people we sat next to were all speaking Farsi to one another! That was really cool. We jumped right on that and they thought it was so lit that 3 white dudes from America could speak to them in their native tongue. We got their phone numbers and facebooks, awesome stuff!!

Sorry for the length of this week’s letter, enjoy.

Liebe Grüße,  ارشد جانساون


P.S. We're going to the temple again this week for Berlin zone conference 😎





Elder Glenn Johnson
Kirche Jesu Christi
Plauer Straße 11d
Brandenburg an der Havel 14770
Deutschland